Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 71.djvu/46

Fig. 5. The Modern Mud-cone of Aso-san with vapors issuing from the New Crater. In the foreground is a temple to the God Aso.

of a floor, a few bowls of rice, and a bath through which a dozen men had been before.

On another day the three of us set out for the modern crater. A walk of a few miles brought us to the village of Yoshida about opposite the central portion of the Aso range, whence a feasible way seemed to offer up to the low place in the range already noted. It led first over the end of a number of low ridges that radiate into the plain from the central mountains and then up an easy grassy slope to the top. Here we had expected a divide that would enable us to look over into the northern basin, but instead we found an expanse of almost level mound-strewn country mostly enclosed by the higher portions of the summit